As is known in the art, when performing upgrades of a software application in conventional systems a driver update requires stopping and restarting the applications that rely on the driver. A reboot of the system may be required, which can significantly impact system operation. As is also known, some systems cannot afford to halt services, or have extremely high costs associated with doing so.
One such driver is multipathing software for managing multiple I/O (input/output) paths through a system. Multipathing can be used for load balancing to increase efficiency and to provide failover in response to component failure, for example. When a new multipathing driver upgrade is needed, it may be necessary to stop the applications to effect the upgrade.